March 28, 2018 Contact: Alice Cherry, (847) 859-9572, info@climatedefenseproject.org. In a victory for the climate movement yesterday, Judge Mary Ann Driscoll of the West Roxbury District Court in Massachusetts found 13 activists not responsible for charges stemming from a 2016 protest against the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline. Judge Driscoll found that the defendants were motivated by...

CDP co-founder Alice Cherry was quoted at length in a ThinkProgress article about the West Roxbury case (which you can read about on our Updates page), in which the judge accepted the activists’ necessity argument after prosecutors downgraded the charges to avoid a jury trial: “According to Alice Cherry, co-founder and staff attorney of the Climate...

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 22, 2018 Contact: Alice Cherry, 847.859.9572 One week prior to trial, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office has abandoned its plans to prosecute the remaining Resist the Pipeline defendants, downgrading all criminal charges to civil infractions and moving the cases out of its jurisdiction. The defendants, who had blocked...

The Intercept has a story by Alleen Brown on the Valve Turners. Climate Defense Project continues to represent this group of climate activists; on Tuesday, our client Leonard Higgins received no jail time for his part in their October 2016 action against tar sands pipelines.

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 22, 2018 Contact: Kelsey Skaggs, 510.883.3118 Fort Benton, MT — Valve-turner and CDP client Leonard Higgins was sentenced on Tuesday for his part in a coordinated protest that shut down the flow of Canadian tar sands oil into the United States in order to fight climate change. A judge in...

In a big step forward for the climate necessity defense, a Washington trial court has issued a written decision allowing a defendant to assert the defense against charges stemming from a protest against the transportation of dangerous fossil fuels. In 2016, Reverend George Taylor participated in an action by Veterans for Peace and Raging Grannies...

CDP Executive Director Kelsey Skaggs appeared at the University of Oregon School of Law to discuss the climate necessity defense. Her co-panelists included law professor Lance Long and climate activists Tim DeChristopher and Emily Johnston. The event was part of the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference.

CDP co-founder Kelsey Skaggs was quoted in a Forbes article on the recent progress of the climate necessity defense: “In some ways it fits very well with climate change,” said Kelsey Skaggs, a Harvard-trained lawyer and executive director of the Climate Defense Project, which supports climate activists. Defendants must prove the threat of overwhelming harm, Skaggs...